Motherhood

The Lakota word for mother is Ina. My Ina was “my first” for everything—my first connection to the world, first source of nourishment, first bond, first love, first healer, first teacher, and first friend. I have always loved and respected my mother, but I never fully appreciated all the sacrifices she made for me until I became a mother myself.

My Ina left her Sicangu and Oglala Lakota homelands at the age of fourteen to attend a prestigious boarding school in New England. Brave and brilliant, she was ready for more than what her school in South Dakota could offer a young Lakota girl. She was one of only two American Indian students in her new school. She drew upon the history and lived experiences of her people to educate her classmates—and teachers—about the horrors Native people endured at the hands of white settlers and the federal government.

Like my Ina in her New England boarding school, I was the only American Indian student in my suburban Baltimore school and, at times, the only African American student too. Even though I was able to make friends easily, I was always acutely aware of how culturally and physically different I was from my classmates. It never occurred to me as I was navigating social circles how lonely my mother may have felt as a teen and then as a mom and wife living far away from her tiospaye (family) in my father’s home state of Maryland.